In a few hours from now, Apple will introduce its most ambitious product in a decade. We’re talking about the foldable iPhone, which might end up hitting the shelves as the iPhone Duo. The most exciting part? It will support Apple Pencil, as per a report by Bloomberg.
The support for a stylus input is no small matter. The whole idea behind making a foldable phone is to offer users a bigger canvas to consume content, and more importantly, do something that they otherwise can’t handle on a cramped 6-inch screen of a phone.
Now that we have smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, or the Razr Fold, the inner 8-inch foldable screen offers users tablet-like canvas. But here’s the disappointing part. Every brand out there tells you that you can get immersive work done, like video editing or photo touch-up, on the tab let like a screen of their foldable phone. However, getting it done using your fingers is not as intuitive as it looks in flashy advertisement videos.
Needless to say, stylus support on foldable phones is such a huge missed opportunity. Samsung, despite being the biggest proponent of stylus support on phones, doesn’t let you play around with an S Pen on its Galaxy Z series foldable phones. Motorola’s Razr Fold is an exception, and so is the Oppo Find N6.
The iPhone Duo is about to join this small pool of foldable phones that support stylus input. Now it’s not clear whether the iPhone Duo will support the Apple Pencil (that you can buy alongside the current crop of iPads), or if it will come with its own miniaturized stylus, copying the approach taken by Motorola or Oppo.
What can work in Apple’s favor, however, is the company’s deep expertise with stylus input. For tablet users, the Apple Pencil Pro is still widely regarded as one of the most advanced and reliable stylists out there. Apple will certainly use that engineering pedigree to offer a standout stylus experience on the iPhone duo, which is expected to cost $2,000 and reportedly goes on sale in October.
